Kathleen Bethel

African American Studies Librarian

Kathleen E. Bethel is the African American Studies Librarian at Northwestern University Library. Early in her career, she worked at the Johnson Publishing Company Library, the Newberry Library, and the Maywood and Wilmette Public Libraries. Currently serving on the Executive Council of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, Inc., she is also a member of their Chicago Branch. She serves on the advisory boards for the Project on the History of Black Writing (University of Kansas), the online Journal of Pan African Studies, the Black Metropolis Research Consortium, and the Alumni Council of the Dominican University Graduate School of Library and Information Science. She served as Bibliography Chair for the Toni Morrison Society and was a trustee of Chicago’s DuSable Museum of African American History, Inc. She has also worked on various projects exploring and documenting Black life and culture. Bethel is a member of the American Library Association (ALA), the Black Caucus of ALA (BCALA), and the Chicago Chapter of BCALA. She is involved in library leadership, diversity, recruitment, and research activities.